Mud or Masterpiece? Painting outside the box

Today I’d like to share a couple of very different photos with you. On friday I shared a tutorial with you for how to create this first one.

Embossed stone book

I liked the effect so much I decided to make a tied cover for my loose sketches. I bound some mat board, embossed some cardstock and made the error of trying to copy what I’d done before. For my mixed media art, it tends to be much more organic, more a case of throw things on the paper and see if I like the results. I’m still very new to acrylic paints, so although I’m used to creating texture and aged effects with ink, it’s all very new with paint. So far I’ve been replicating the techniques I use with inks with paint, following my nose you might say. It’s all very experimental, which is fun but often unpredictable.

It doesn’t always go to plan though, when I have a plan, an agenda I have a tendency to ‘try’ rather than just letting things happen. On this new piece, I put too much texture paste on, and lost some of the embossing detail, then over did some of the colours and didn’t have the skills to hide or alter it. Refusing to give up and having recently learnt the power of a unifying wash (see my dark wood book & video) I decided to put a wash of colour over the whole piece and ‘save it’. It was going fine, until I tried adding some gold to try to lift the colour a bit, then didn’t like it and ‘tried’ to scrub it off BUT the blue wash wasn’t totally dry and I lost the last of the white background and it looks dark again :(

The card was saying ‘Just let me be, stop ‘helping’! so I did and this is what I have

Grunged version of embossed stone

I didn’t love it, but I didn’t hate it either. Sometimes when you are working on the edge of your comfort zone and things go a bit off plan, you have to just put them away for a few days, and look at them again. Or just leave them on your desk and see how they look in different lights. I couldn’t decide if I had made mud or a master piece. OK a master piece is a bit optimistic, but it was a new level of layers and grunge and it was kinda good but new!

I let the piece dry, then had it sitting on the desk next to me. In the morning sun the blues really shine, later in the lower light of the afternoon the colour changes and the browns come out. I think I like it, I like things that you find new things each time you look at it. I have toyed with adding more metallic or white areas to lift the piece, but I think its time to let it be :) I can make another, another day and change the colours and patterns and I’ll get a totally new piece. I like art that takes you on a bit of a journey, when a piece shows you more the more time you spend with it, rather than a bright brash piece that is in your face. Personal taste and all that.

Mud or Masterpiece?

How about you, what do you do when you get a Mud or Masterpiece moment? Do you battle on and keep ‘bothering’ it till it looks the way you hoped? Or accept whats there and start a new piece with what the first one taught you.

Each book I bind teaches me something, that I need to cut more thread next time, how to join extra thread so I can finish a project, how to measure how much thread a book took to make so I’ll know next time. Instead of seeing things that go ‘off route’ as failures I try to see them as the projects teaching me things, that will help me for next time. Its only failed if you give up and never create again.

Would love to hear what you do when faced with a mud or master piece moment, do leave me a comment and let me know. I still prefer the clean design at the top as the texture is easier to see, but I love the depth and tone with the second one. What do you think?

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2 Responses

The second one definitely leans more towards the materpiece than mud, I like it very much. It isn’t a quick look piece but a piece to look into and observe the shifting light over it.
I have many mud or masterpiece moments :) Quite often I will leave them alone on my desk and look at them from time and time before deciding whether they are useable or not – sometimes what looks awful can still be rescued by cutting it down and putting something else on top. The ones that are definitely mud I know straight away that they are rubbish and those go into the recycling immediately :)
I think you instinctively know if a piece is truly awful and beyond doing anything with.
These experiments of yours are truly inspiring and get the old grey cells working again! I haven’t got any ‘proper’ texture paste but wonde if the Dreamweaver paste used on the stencils would have a similar effect?? Well there is only way to find out :)
Hugs
Lynn x

Thanks Lynn, I think you are right, there are things I’ve made that have gone straight to the bin.

Give the dreamweaver paste a try. I think it might be similar stuff, I never bought any becuase of the cost and the fact I’d want lots of colours in it, when I found out I could colour tint the texture paste it solved the problem, just one jar and colour however much you like, whatever colour you like :)

Too hot to paint today, might do a little sketching later, if the temperature goes down. FOund a great piece of bark in the garden that I’d like to try to sketch/paint. Unlike flowers it has the advantage that it won’t wilt.

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